Crow glanced down the hall as Penelope approached, breaking off the casual conversation he’d been having with Naida while they had been waiting. With everyone ready to go, they headed through the large doors into the palace courtyard. The air was just as chilly as it had been the last time the viceroy had been outside, if not a little more so, and the snow had begun to fall more thickly around them. He drew his hood over his head and buried his hands beneath his cloak to keep dry, unsure how long they would be walking in the quiet storm before they reached the sanctuary of the tavern.

When the knight fell in step beside him, he glanced down at her with an amused smile. “It’ll be nice to visit one without any responsibilities for once,” he mused, his breath fogging as he spoke. “I think I’m going to like this a lot better.”

“Wait, what do you mean you interrogated drunks?” Naida peered back over her shoulder with a curious expression, eavesdropping on her friends. “And why would you do that in the first place?”

“I was helping Penelope and her battalion track down a band of thieves,” Crow replied. “Sometimes you can learn a lot from men and women who’ve lost their inhibitions.”

“Oh yeah, Penelope mentioned something about that to me before,” the princess recalled. Her lip curled upward in a puckish smirk. “Sounds like you two make a good team.”

“When our interests line up, I’d have to agree,” Crow lifted his shoulders, nonchalantly brushing off his sister’s insinuation. He turned back to the knight with another smile, “It also helped that we’d worked together once before in Younis. I wouldn’t have trusted her otherwise.”